33 expert tips and tricks for iOS 6

How well do you really know iOS? Dan Moren and Lex Friedman have assembled a veritable smorgasbord of tips and tricks for Apple's mobile operating system.

Now, all instances of the Delete command in Mail will be replaced by an Archive button.

Deleting messages. If you do enable archiving as an option for your messages, that doesn't mean you're no longer able to delete messages outright from your iPhone or iPad. Just tap and hold on the Archive button, and you'll get a second option: Delete Message.

Surf's our turf

Quickly access your recent browsing history. In Mobile Safari, tap and hold on the Back button to see a list of your recently visited pages. On the iPad, tap and hold on the browser's New Tab Plus (+) button to get a list of recently closed tabs.

Open webpages in the background. Safari on the Mac makes it easy to open linked webpages in a new tab, so that you needn't interrupt what you're reading just because you also want to check out a few linked items. You get that same perk on iOS--though you need to enable it first. Visit Settings > Safari > Open Links and choose the In Background option. Now, tap and hold on links in Safari to choose to open them in the background instead.

Full screen mode. New in iOS 6 is an option to browse the Web in full-screen mode--at least when you're using your iPhone in landscape orientation. This frees up the pixels otherwise occupied by Safari's location bar and tab bar. Rotate your phone to landscape mode, and then press the full-screen double-arrows at the bottom right corner.

Stream of photo consciousness

Shared Photo Streams. You probably already know about your own Photo Stream, which shares devices between your iOS devices and Macs. But if you want to share photos with your friends, family, or colleagues you can also create Shared Photo Streams.

To create such a stream, open Photos and tap on the Photo Stream button in the toolbar. In the upper left corner is a Plus (+) button; tap that and enter a name for your shared stream along with a list of people you'd like to invite. Photos can be added from your existing photo albums or Camera Roll by tapping on the Share button and selecting Photo Stream or by tapping Edit while viewing your shared stream and tapping the Add button that appears at the bottom. While the people you've shared the photo stream with can write comments on or "like" your photos, they cannot add their own photos to the stream.

Public websites for Shared Photo Streams. One downside to Shared Photo Streams is that they're really accessible only to users on iOS devices running iOS 6 or later or on Macs running Mountain Lion. So if you want to share those photos with Mom, who's using an original iPad, or Dad, who's still using his PC laptop, you'll want, instead, to make your stream available via a public website.